featherbed
by Rhavia
Summary: Gendrya / "Gendry she finds amongst the corpses and bones that scatter the snow." Set on either side of the Battle of Winterfell.
1. after

**A/N: **Gendrya brought my muse back from the dead after 5 years and I'm shipper trash again.

This is a series on AO3 but chapters make a lot more sense on here for the purpose of keeping things together. They are in the order I wrote them, as I didn't intend them to become a series - the chronological order is: first (ch4), before (ch3), dusk (ch5), after (ch1), dawn (ch2).

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**after.**

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They find each other some time after the battle.

Arya had sought Jon first – for if he hadn't made it, the next war to come was not one they could win. The white-haired Queen be damned; the North would follow Sansa to hell over a Targaryen but without her brother they were doomed to the rule of the seven hells and lord knows what that could bring. She may not care for the game but she knew the players, and his death was one she could not stand. Perhaps her sister had rubbed off on her.

Last she had seen him flying towards the fray atop a dragon. How, she did not know. Arya had thought she'd known winter. She may have been born during the long summer, but her home had always been Winterfell – always touched by the frost of the north, she had grown knowing of the cold and the snow that those in King's Landing did not. Death, death she knew well, intimately, but she did not know winter. The skies had blackened even as morn approached and under it's blanket it was near impossible to tell friend and foe apart if not for the blue of their eyes.

Winter brought with it a new face to death and she would be lying if she said she had not wanted to make its acquaintance. Now, she was glad for daybreak, and to see her brother at the other end of the battlefield, beaten and bloody but alive.

Gendry she finds amongst the corpses and bones that scatter the snow.

She is not looking for him. There are very few people this world has left for her to love and even fewer she trusts; in the moment she cares little for which allies may be left to fight down South. She is looking for life. Jon, Sansa, Bran. Family is all the Stark's truly have left, be one a bastard and another renounced of his house, and she only knows one to be alive. But Gendry is family. Seeing him on his knees in the snow reminds her of that. _I can be your family._ That was not a promise made lightly – years may have separated them, even if very little had on the eve of battle, but he is the first and she suspects only found family she has left.

He seems to hear her footsteps settle behind him. He brings his gaze down from the sky and turns to her. Relief is already awash across his face, the same relief she has seen on countless men in her steps through fallen bodies, but a ghost of a smile graces his lips as his eyes land upon hers. His mouth seems to form her name but before it can finish he is on his feet, striding towards her to close the gap between them. It is very different to last night, but she finds herself in his arms again all the same.

She is lucky, she thinks, to have found two of the men she loves alive. Too lucky. She drowns the thought out by pressing her lips to Gendry's, the flood of emotions overcoming her almost enough to warm the chill from her bones.

"Arya," he says, this time managing a whisper, as they part. It is a question, she realises, when he pulls back and his eyes search her for wounds. She should do the same for him, but he can stand and walk and speak and she knows that's enough to mean he won't die. Not today. Not here, not now, and at least not from this war. She kisses him again for good measure.

They hadn't exchanged many words last night. They should have, perhaps, but sometimes more can be said without. She had changed since she had last set foot in Winterfell. Everything had changed. Her family were not who she once knew and the months spent navigating their new boundaries had been tireless. Gendry had not changed. He had grown and hardened, as they all had, but he had treated her no differently. He had teased her as if years had not passed and it was a constant she had not known she needed. When she had laid with him, she did not know if they would change; but he had always belonged to her and she had hoped she was right.

They are in the forge again before Arya realises. It is the last place men would go; the crypts are where their women and children are, and gods know whether they remained untouched. She tries not to think of Sansa. There is no use in rushing to find a corpse. Death is death.

Right now, there is still adrenaline pumping through her veins from battle, a victory high, and she must do something with herself. She should rest but sleep hasn't nestled in yet and clearly Gendry feels the same, for he has her pinned to the wall, his lips against her throat. Is it terrible, she asks herself, that she did not think of her siblings' livelihoods during the long night but of being back in bed with him, makeshift or otherwise?

Gendry pulls away to take her in and she realises she must have spoken her thoughts aloud because he is smirking at her, a disbelieving but cocky smirk. She feels herself flush, though she's not sure it visible – she's likely already red either from the cold or from his kisses, or worse from the blood of the soldiers she fought next to. She parts her lips but for a moment she doesn't know how to justify herself. "I won't say the thought didn't cross my mind," he says after a beat, and she knows he dragged the silence out longer than necessary to fluster her. She had done the same to him last night: she will give him this one.

She wants him to continue where he left off, but she interrupts him instead by blurting out, "I'm glad you're not dead."

It's not quite as eloquent as she had hoped her first words to him would be, and as his smirk returns she wants to kiss it from his face. When all he says is, "Me too," she hits his arm instead and he laughs. It's an honest, giddy laugh, and it almost feels wrong considering the tragedy they just faced; but it's infectious and she realises she's smiling for the first time since they were last together. They had thought they were going to die. Maybe it is ok to be happy that they didn't.

Gendry rubs his arm, sobering up. "That wasn't very ladylike."

"I'd say you're far more of a lord than I am a lady," Arya counters, and she believes it to be true not just because of his lineage. He has always been honest and kind. They were banded together through secrecy and lies all those years ago; her meant to be dead and him not meant to even be alive to begin with. She was young and too trusting, but he never betrayed her, and protected her from himself even when he knew not who he was running from.

He gazes down at her like he did the previous night, eyes soft, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips like he can't quite believe she's here before him, like this. She's not sure she would believe it either if not for the heat radiating between them. She had offered herself to him back then, to a point, and it had not been until last night that she had given him the rest of her, his hands rough, callouses lining his palms as he had taken her by the waist. She wonders if this time the new scars scattering his palms will catch on hers.

"But you're still _my_ lady," he says finally, brushing a strand of hair from her face, caught between mud and blood. His expression doesn't change, and there is a heaviness on her chest because neither have they.

They don't exchange words this time either, at least not at first; they don't need to, they might not ever need to. But she sees his gaze linger on her scars again as she strips – not the fresh ones, for he knows where they came from – and she resolves to tell him everything. He may be the only person she both loves and trusts, and if there is no more wall in the North then perhaps she should take hers down too.

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	2. dawn

**A/N:** I didn't meant to make this a series.

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**dawn.**

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Gendry wants to know where her scars came from. Not the ones from the battle, those they share, but the ones he saw by candlelight the night before and that curve around her waist now in the dim light of dawn. He can't imagine she had them when he was taken by the Red Woman. She has changed, grown, despite being as fiery and unyielding as ever. He's uncertain how well he even knows her now, but she still appears to trust him as he did years ago. He had wanted to ask last night, about her scars, but she would have silenced him. That wasn't a time for words. Perhaps now was.

"Is this how you wanted me last night?" Arya asks from where she is sat beneath him, ankles still hooked loosely around the back of his legs.

He snorts out a breath, discarding the scrap of linen he was using to clean the two of them, and leans forward to press his forehead to hers. "I'll have you any way you'll let me," he says. He's damn lucky enough to have shared last night with her, let alone this moment, but it's the truth. If she came to him once more or a thousand times more, he would have her. He gazes down at her, knowing she can read his expression all too well, but it doesn't seem to break her like it did last night.

"Good," she says. She slides her hand up from his chest to his neck and guides him down to meet her lips. It is the softest of all the kisses they have shared, and yet it hits him the hardest. This isn't fuelled by lust, nor the relief they felt in knowing the other was alive, but more – and he swallows thickly when she parts from him. She is Arya Stark, a Lady of Winterfell, and he is the bastard from Flea Bottom who has bedded her not once but twice now. She looks to him, then, almost as if reading his thoughts to drive the point home. "I want you in my bed tonight. And every other night after."

Seven hells, he's fucked.

Gendry was once one of the few who knew she was alive, when she was still scrawny, disguised as a boy with a cropped mop of hair. He had heard the rumours that echoed through King's Landing upon his return from Dragonstone – how the only Stark's that remained after were her prisoner sister and bastard brother. He had assumed her dead, alongside her brother Robb, and hadn't much dwelled upon the whispers of the Stark girl in hiding. He hadn't wanted to think of the girl he had known being gone. She was nothing like that girl now. Still slight, but a storm; her hair long enough for him to play with between his fingers. She has blossomed into a woman, a strong woman, and how he would love to accept her offer.

He opens his mouth to protest but she speaks first. "You called me your lady." She's right. It hadn't been but a half hour and he still meant it, but he was no lord. His Baratheon blood had meant nothing then and it meant nothing now. He was lowborn and he could serve her any way that she wished but he could not be what she wanted. He had already taken from her that which he had no right to, which he did not deserve; and that would reflect on her, not him. She was a lady.

"You can't be, not like that—"

"Are you afraid?" she cuts, the frost in her voice more bitter than the snow outside. Yes, he is. Her brother is a King and he has defiled his sister. She may not see it that way but plenty will.

"Arya… you may not want to be, but you _are_ a lady." She's standing now, set apart from him but sizing him up. When she opens her mouth to speak, he shushes her with a hard look; she's as stubborn as ever but he can match it, and he's not sure she can quite see the consequences of their actions. The pitch of his voice drops. "Last night… we expected to die." He knits his brows together, eyes running the length of the scars on her belly – some still raw from only hours ago, many more traced with white lines. "This morning we were too relieved to care." He raises his gaze to hers and her eyes are hard; he should have expected that, really. He was just as much a part of this as her and now he is pulling away. He can see the fire brewing in her and it angers him, too, because he's more afraid for her than he is for himself. "I shouldn't have—"

"Do you think that matters now?" Arya presses, but it's not as cold this time. It's almost exasperated, and the mask she has been wearing since first visiting him in the forge, that even last night she wore loosely, starts to chip away. "I know death. I have seen it, I've been it. But we just fought the dead, and whole damn army of them, and yet we're _alive_. Doesn't that make you question the rules?"

It had. Since his trip beyond the wall Gendry had questioned the game the highborn had played to sit atop a seat of swords. The Iron Throne wasn't anything special; he had forged far more in the last few weeks alone, dragonglass far more powerful than iron against the true enemy of them all. He had seen the dead walking, dragons long-thought to be extinct. He takes a breath. There is never any winning with this girl – this _woman_. "Your brother…"

"You would defer to my brother?" He can almost hear the laugh in her voice, and it irks him. Of course he should.

He steps forward where she had taken a step back in that last moment, leaving little between them. "He's King in the North, isn't he?" he says, heated. "At least to everyone up here?" Let alone her brother, who of course he would defer to in the absence of her father. _Gods_, this shouldn't even be a discussion.

Gendry can see her chest rise and fall as she breathes deeply, eyes never wavering from his. "He's also a bastard." That stops him for a beat, and Arya steams on ahead, "I don't care for their rules. I care for you." It is the closest to an admission of what there is between them that she has come. At least verbally – the invitation to her bed still both enthrals and terrifies him, and while he's quite sure he understood the implications, this leaves no room for debate.

He is also incredibly aware of how close she is to him; how hot her skin is and how cold it is outside. He can't say he's surprised when she kisses him. She's merciless, too, not taking no for an answer. He wants her too much to oppose even though he knows he should. In the brief moment between the first and second kiss, he considers: the dead were walking not moments ago, burnt down by dragons, and a bastard is King. Maybe she can be his family, he concedes.

They part minutes later and he doesn't pick up the argument where he left off. She smiles, and he knows she's gloating at having won.

"What will you tell your brother?" he says, long after he has followed her lead and begun packing layers of clothing back on, drenched from the battle but at least warm.

Her smile lingers. "That he is a bastard who fucked a Queen for love. This isn't any different, and hardly any worse."

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	3. before

**A/N:** Ya girl hasn't written smut in a long while, so please forgive me in advance. Rated M for forgesex, also takes place before the prior 2 chapters.

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**before.**

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"I'm not the Red Woman. Take your own bloody pants off."

Gendry's eyes are still caught on her, and then he's rushing to remove the last of his clothes and a smile tugs at her lips. Much as she wants this, she wants him to also. She had long since decided that she would choose who to give her maidenhead to, if anyone – she knew she wouldn't be married off to suit the desires of someone else's politics and gift it to a stranger, but until she had realised death was likely the only outcome on the other side of this night, she hadn't known she would give it to him. She will respect any lines he wishes to draw.

Three women is not many, not from the way she knows men to be. It's enough for him to know what to do and to guide her without making her feel foolish; and she tries not to feel so now, standing bare before him. She doesn't entirely know what three includes of the Red Witch but she expects he has seen her naked, too, and from the icy tone he had used she assumes it was not for wanting to. Arya wonders, briefly, how she compares. She is smaller, toned, and her body scarred; she doubts she is nearly as soft as any of the other girls he's been with.

He stares at her in awe as she mounts him. It's not a look she's experienced before. Even wearing the faces of whores in Braavos, no man has looked at her like he is now; like she's the sun and stars brought down from the sky and he can't quite believe that she's real. She wonders if he has looked at other girls this way. She doesn't imagine so, but the thought is persistent and so she quells it with a kiss.

They part and Gendry whispers her name again, and she likes the sound of it on his tongue. It is an unspoken question that lingers between them. _Is this ok?_

Part of her wanted this to just be about fucking him. About letting him take her, no questions asked, because in a few hours they will be dead and no one can judge her for wanting some reprieve. He is honourable, and she can trust him with her body. But he is solid beneath her, hard between her legs, and his voice so gentle she doesn't want to admit that this is far more than just sex. He still looks at her like she is the sun, but he is not afraid of being burnt and that alone is enough alone to break her.

Arya answers him by pressing herself against his cock. It brings a gasp forth from his lips, his nails grazing her back; when he meets her gaze again something burns behind his eyes. It sets alight a fire in her belly and she rocks gently, slowly, her own breaths a light stammer in anticipation, and yet she keeps her eyes trained on him. Taunting him. His hands skim her skin to grip at her hips, his palms pressed against bone. He could break her, if he wanted to, but he holds her steady instead of hard. She whimpers the first time he pulls her down to him, bites her lip. It's not that she is nervous; it's that she wants him so bad it has become a need, and she no longer trusts herself.

And then she is kissing him again, needing to fill her mouth with his tongue until he fills the rest of her. His touches get rougher as want swallows him too, now pressing his feelings into her skin with his fingertips. She has felt some of this before, from the last few nights alone in her bed, images of him working the anvil in her head. Nothing compares to the real thing, though, and Gods they haven't even started yet.

When she breaks away from the kiss his lips follow hers, like he is making up for the time that he hadn't. Then he shifts, repositioning himself, and gentle hands part her legs further. There is another question on his lips as his eyes skim her body, and the answer is no. They have so little time. Too little time to take things slow. He can have her all he wants should they survive the long night to come, but she's not hopeful and it pushes her to kiss him, hard, as he guides his cock between her thighs.

He enters her and she's not sure if hurt is the right way to describe it. It's a sharp sensation and she hisses, eyes shutting. She wants to bear down on him but he holds her steady, his forehead pressed to hers as he lowers her hips. What's painful is the wait, not the feeling, and she must be making noises he likes because she feels his brow furrow against hers, his hold tighten. And then he is inside her, fully. Her eyes flicker open and this time she is the one seeing stars.

Gendry lets out a snort of laughter and the sensation ripples through him to meet her between her legs. "You never did like to make things easy, did you?" he says, his thumb drawing light circles between the crook of her hip and thigh. She suspects he means he should have her on her back beneath him, but he has seemed more than willing to let her lead.

Arya feels her expression soften around him for the first time since she was a child. This never could have just been about fucking him. Her edges have hardened through the years but no matter how long she had spent at the House of Black and White, no matter how well-trained an assassin she had become, she had always felt too much. Too much to join the Faceless Men, too much not to return to Winterfell, too much not to take a breath here, just for a moment, and take in the man beneath her that cares so deeply for her she can feel it each time he touches her.

His mouth curls into a fond smile and he takes her face in both hands to pull her down into an easy kiss, giving her time to her find herself again. She splays her hands across his chest, tracing the lines of his muscles. He seems to lean into her touch and she smiles against his mouth.

Then he is peppering kisses down her neck and she is rocking her hips against his. She doesn't keep to a rhythm. She could, if she tried, but she's desperate and he doesn't seem to mind, not if the groans he presses into her throat mean anything. Arya wonders if the sounds she makes are doing the same to him as his are to her, tightening like a knot in her lower abdomen. He keeps one hand slipped under her right thigh, following her movements, while the other rises up her waist to her breast. It fits perfectly in the palm of his hand and she wonders if it's an advantage she has over the other girls; and then she hums in satisfaction as he begins caressing her.

She aches for him now, and by the time his lips have found the nipple of her left breast she's lost most of the composure she had been clinging onto. His hands are back on her hips, and she grips at his shoulders to steel herself a he guides her up, down, and she is close, so close. She murmurs his name and somewhere in between it catches in her throat, turns to a moan, and she bucks her hips against his, pulsing around him.

He's yet another person she risks losing. But she hasn't felt this alive, nor this human, in such a very long time, and perhaps it's better to die knowing everything she has, everything she could have, than to die already half-dead.

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	4. first

**A/N:** I honestly didn't mean to write this much Gendrya, but each time I'm 80% done with one piece the lines for another start popping up in my head. This takes place prior to 'before'.

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**first.**

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Gendry hadn't known to expect her in Winterfell, and if he were honest he could have done with a warning. When she had swept into the forge amidst the Hound's mockery of him – a man he remembered, quite clearly, from her list – he had temporarily forgotten how to form words. "You've gotten better," Arya had said. "You too," he had replied, and wondered if he should strike himself off the anvil next.

She had grown from the scrappy young girl he had once known. Not just physically; she had a different air to her, one that stood to intimidate those who were frightened by confidence, particularly that of a woman. She had always been bull-headed, it was a trait they shared, only she had often not thought her actions through, and he could remember a number of times having to save her from her own foolishness – when she thought an attempt at the Hound's life was wise being the first to come to mind. She made no move to slash him off her list in that moment and he wondered if she was biding her time. If she still even had a list left. She knew who she was now, shamelessly, and it was a stark contrast to who she had been.

And so many years after her request, he had finally made his way to Winterfell; serving another of her brothers, in yet another war.

It was not that he hadn't seen the looks she had given him each time she had visited the forge, under the guise of pestering him to craft her new weapon. She was hardly subtle, much of a cool exterior as she tried to keep now. Perhaps she wasn't trying to hide it, and he didn't quite know what to think of that either. It wasn't that he hadn't seen the looks but that he had tried his very best to ignore them; he was still a bastard, and she was still the daughter of a lord. He hadn't been successful. From the moment his 'm'lady' comment had broken a smile across her face so, too, had any resolve he may have had broken.

Gendry wonders if her offer still stands, and that is how he finds himself back in the forge on the eve of their death, watching her practice the bow like it's child's play. She has sharpened her senses in the years past and he couldn't have snuck up on her if he'd tried, so he's not surprised when she turns to him, unfazed by his presence, eyes her weapon and asks briskly, "That for me?"

He holds it out to her, watching her face closely. He know she's impressed by the smile hinting at her lips, even if her words don't suggest such; he watches her twirling the lance in her hands, assessing its weight, and it dawns on him that the bow is only one of many weapons this Arya Stark is seasoned with. He had told her to go to the crypts, selfishly, and she had been right to refuse. Likely a more skilled fighter than most of the North, a thought both relieving and frightening, she would outlive him on the night to come.

His mind is elsewhere, though. "Last time you saw me you wanted me to come to Winterfell," he says, "Took the long road, but…" He lets the sentence drop off. He's not much sure he had anything to finish it with in the first place – _but I'm here now_ isn't enough because he wasn't there then. It feels as though he is asking forgiveness. He can remember the hurt on her face when he rebuffed her at the Brotherhood, how she had stormed away from him to hide what he had suspected were tears. _I can be your family._ It had rung in his ears for days on the back of that wagon, across the sea. It had even followed him back to King's Landing until he had buried it deep.

He had prepared for rejection, but not the blunt way she asks about the Red Woman, as if she's followed his thoughts and not the question he left out in the open.

"I don't like that woman," she had said on that day, years ago, and her disdain is still plain by the way she asks if he had been with her. Her voice is low and she avoids his gaze, curiosity turning to something else. Gendry splutters as he follows after her to deny it, the tightening in his chest saying she can't think that's why he left her. Instead, she asks how many women he has been with. She won't accept anything but the truth and if this is her form of jealously he's not sure he likes it. He'd come to ask of her, not to be interrogated.

"Three," he says, finally. It seems meagre; it seems to satisfy her.

She's quiet, eyes looking him up and down, and something in her voice changes. Her grey eyes catch the light of the torches and he sees her soften. "We're probably going to die soon," Arya says, closing the gap between them. She's not walking with the same confidence as before and she doesn't break eye contact. He sees her swallow. "I ought to know what it's like before that happens."

He stares at her. Her gaze is intense, relentless. There's a stuttering in his chest and whether he gets out a response or not he knows it makes no difference. His eyes flicker to her lips, he murmurs her name, and then her mouth is on his. The first is just a kiss – likely her first, he realises, and she's gifting it to him of all people – and she hesitates before the next. The second is fervent and her hands finds his neck before they find his clothes. He presses his forehead to hers, the closest he can get while her deft fingers undo buckles and straps, untie strings, and how he needs to be close to her right now to know this is real.

The night is quiet and all he can hear are their breaths; hers heavy, eager, as she strips away his layers. It feels like making up for lost time; 4 long years of it when she may have thought him dead as he did her. Gendry's hands are clumsy as he unties her leathers, like he's in a dream and the faster he works the sooner he will wake. He smiles then, breaking their kiss, almost breaks into a laugh – the world he's known is about to end and he's _giddy_. This girl, woman, may be the last thing he knows, her smile mirroring his as she pulls the last of the cloth that separates him from her over his head, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Her lips are back on his but only for a moment before she pushes him onto his back, his chest rising and falling heavy as he watches her rip off her shirt like she can't be rid of it sooner. She raises her hands and the first of her skin his eyes catch is her waist.

A breath lodges in his throat as he sees the scars; brow creasing as he follows their lines across her body. She's not what he expected. She's still every bit of the wolf he knew her to be but now she bares the marks to prove it. They're a history of where she's been, scattered across her skin; so different from his own that only tell the tale of a smith. He knows not to ask, not now, but now he realises just how much time has passed and how much she has changed. If they should survive this, as unlikely as it may be, he hopes she will let him see her scars again, tell him the story of each.

"I'm not the Red Woman," she says, drawing him back in. "Take off your own bloody pants." His fingers have never been so nimble.

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	5. dusk

**A/N:** Wish I could stay up to watch 8x03 when it airs at 2am but I signed up to help work with doggos tomorrow, so I'll be on a social media ban for some 18 hours after the episode airs haha. This follows on from before and happens prior to after.

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**dusk.**

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The sound of the horn jolts him awake. He shifts, his cloak inching down his chest, vision a haze in the darkness until he realises the torches have long since burnt out. The air is cold, so much colder than it has been, soaking into the bare skin of his shoulders. Even the late night wind after hours working by the fire pit wasn't nearly as bitter as this. The morn should have come but he can barely see his own breath before him, and this was more than just darkness. This is winter, true winter, brought down from beyond the wall, and the chill he feels in his bones as that reality settles is not from the cold alone.

He turns to Arya, laying still next to him, her shoulder brushed against his arm, the distant wail of the horn not a shock to her. She doesn't move; her jaw trained tight to mask her emotions, but her eyes have always been where she is the most expressive and he can see them waver.

"Did you sleep?" Gendry asks. He doesn't mean to. He can see the creases under her eyes and he knows the answer. Even having worked himself to exhaustion at the forge the past days and nights, he knows he wouldn't have slept if not for her. Fear would have wrapped her pretty little claws around him, shaking the sleep from his skin, if not for the wolf lying beside him. It must be easier for those who haven't been beyond the wall, he thinks; they have only heard of the army of the dead like something from a twisted fairy-tale. Jon, Ser Jorah, Beric Dondarrion, the Hound – perhaps his journey North had not been long enough, for he couldn't see how they could remain so calm in the face of death. Death came to every man, but to be slain by the fallen, by remnants of men instead of those with blood in their veins, was something far worse. A hollow death.

"No," she replies, and he can feel the heat of her breath beside him. She knows death, she had said, and looked forward to seeing the face of the enemy. He wonders what fear she does feel.

There is a wealth of noise outside. Men rushing to their positions, their footsteps clanking against wooden posts amidst calls for armaments. Their steps hammer like the beat of his heart but he feels no shame in being afraid. This isn't a war like the game of thrones, where no matter the outcome the common folk will suffer and die, and common folk he is; if they do not win this war, Westeros becomes a cold and frozen place and humanity dies at their hands.

Arya slides out from under the warm furs of his cloak and fear curls between the hairs on his arms. She begins to dress briskly, and when he follows her lead and faces the cold against his naked skin he hisses. She was born in summer but raised in the snow, and very little seems to chill her bones.

As he ties the last of his leathers, he catches her eye. She is fully dressed and waiting, but for what he is not sure. Truth be told he had half expected her to be gone when he awoke. He had heard the Hound talk of her as cold-hearted, heard how Jon saw something different behind her eyes, and from Davos how Lady Sansa often did not recognise her. But right now, with death beyond the door of the forge, he had never felt he knew her better. Last night had been more than just sex to her – it may have started just that, but he had felt it in the way she had reached for him: from need, not want.

If they are to meet their ends on the other side of that door, Gendry wants her to know.

"Arya—" he begins, but she sweeps the distance between them and presses her mouth to his in a long, hard kiss. _Don't,_ it says, and her eyes echo the warning when she pulls back.

He ignores her, resting his forehead against hers, his eyes shut tight. She had had her say last night; which was nothing at all, bodies talking instead of mouths. "Arya," he says again, firmer, feeling her tense, "You may not need to say anything, but let me have this."

He thinks of the Arya he knew on their way to the Night's Watch, how she had done a piss poor job of pretending to be a boy and yet to her luck they travelled with idiots. Of the Arya who had used Lommy's death to shield him from the Lannister army, thinking faster than he ever could have. The Arya who had put blind faith in a stranger, playing him at his own game, for them to escape Harrenhal. The Arya who had offered him a place in her pack, when her trust in others had long died, and he had been foolish enough to refuse. Arya, who despite everything, had chosen to spend her last moments with him.

Arya, standing before him now, her forehead pressed to his in this last moment of reprieve.

To put his thoughts into words is to make them real, far more real than they are already, he realises, and he understands now her lack of them. They well in his chest, catch in his throat. "Don't die," he breathes instead, requesting a promise from her in lieu of a declaration, the urgency thick, "_Gods_, don't die."

It's a prayer, really, not that he has ever believed in any Gods, not with what they have done to the world.

Her next breath is a snort and he can sense the smile on her lips before he sees the ghost of it when she pulls away. Her hand itches to the sword at her belt, eyes flickering to the barrel she had left her lance atop last night. The silence haunts him as she reaches for it. _If I can't protect her, let it,_ he thinks desperately, knowing too well he would be of more hindrance than help.

Arya steps closer. "The pack survives," she says in little more than a whisper. He catches it, just, but it doesn't sound like it is meant for him; it's a mantra for herself, her family, and he feels he has intruded. But her gaze rises to meet his after it's uttered and then she is gone, slipping out the door to meet her sister and leaving her newly crowned omega behind.

* * *

_._


End file.
